WORRIED WORKERS
before the employee started working from home, that may not be sufficient now. Remember that you no longer benefit from those quick water cooler conversations to fill things in, so maybe now you need to check in twice a week.”
Managers also need to show interest in the remote worker’s working habits and emotional state. “Home workers tend to spend more hours at their desks and often fail to get enough physical exercise,” says Borysenko. “That can affect their focus during the day and translate into productivity problems.” Managers need to give permission to take breaks and walks. Managers can also encourage home workers to network as a team and engage in activities that improve their psychological well-being. Perhaps they can organize exercise groups, confer- encing on cell phones during walks. “Try organizing remote workers in pairs and have them work on tasks together so they do not feel so isolated,” says Altschuler. “You might establish a larger mission by organizing a Red Cross blood drive or a volunteer group at a food bank. Such ‘culture building activities’ bring people together.”
Hot Buttons If Anita and Robert represent em- ployees in general, the advice for re-motivating them is valid. But in human psychology, one size does not fit all. “Good managers realize that people are motivated by different things,” says Dennis Whittaker, Ph.D., a Charlotte, N.C.-based psychologist who specializes in corporate psychol- ogy. “They make an effort to discover each person’s hot button—the moti- vator intrinsic to their personality— then push that button every day.” Some people may be motivated by status and by sales results. Others may be motivated by workplace stability, by joy in the process, and by the details of their work assignments. Still others might desire to collaborate and bring people together. Furthermore, people can possess mixed motivational bags.
Sometimes you can ferret out hidden motivators by just asking. Other times, employee actions can be revealing. “Pay attention to what people do well,” says Borysenko. “When you see employees who thrive in group settings and seem to love bringing teams together, for example, you can be sure they are motivated by collaboration.”
One final thing: Many supervisors assume that financial compensation is a prime motivator, but experience shows that employees usually want something more. “Money is just a ‘satisfier,’” says Forlines. “If you pay people fairly for their expertise,
are more likely to stick around.”
- DENNIS WHITTAKER, PH.D
money will not be an issue.” Indeed, she says, money most often comes into the picture when people think they are not being fairly compensated. But as a productivity booster, it falls short.
The Success Environment Successful motivation occurs not so much by working some magic on an employee but rather by re-engineering the working environment in ways that stimulate each individual’s hot but- tons. “There is a fallacy that you can motivate people,” says Dr. Kevin D. Gazzara, founder and senior partner of Magna Leadership Solutions in Phoenix, Ariz. “That’s not true. What you can do is create an environment that raises the potential for motivation.” Some motivators can light fires under all of your employees, whether still working at home or back at the traditional workplace. For example, most of the Roberts and Anitas of your world will respond productively to a consciously and gradually increasing degree of autonomy. Words such as
24 “Engaged people
“use your judgment about the best way to get this done” will help spark creative initiative by focusing on results rather than method. Providing the right degree of autonomy is something of a balancing act. “You need to create a motivating environment in which the work given people is challenging enough for them to avoid boredom, but not so intimi- dating as to cause anxiety,” says Gazzara. “When people have the right balance of challenge and skill, they can get into a zone I refer to as ‘the flow.’ And then their engagement with the enterprise goes way up.” The right amount of autonomy will encourage employees to exercise creativity in problem solving and to master new skills. They will also see their work as having a meaning deeper than just the earning of a paycheck. “Engaged people enjoy what they do, do more of it, and work longer and harder,” says Whittaker. “As a result, the business gets more mileage out of their working hours, and that is the very definition of productivity.” Enhanced performance can lead to unexpected benefits. One is the retention of top performers. “Engaged people are more likely to stick around,” says Whittaker. “And that’s good because the business can avoid the expense of recruiting, interviewing, assessing, and onboard- ing new people.”
Those same deeply engaged em- ployees are likely to identify closely with your enterprise, helping you recruit still more high-quality people and transform your business into a robust profit-making machine. “Motivated employees take the initiative to perform better and improve business processes,” says Whittaker. “But they will only do that if they feel their future is tied to their place of work.”
New York-based freelancer Phillip M. Perry negotiates win-win deals with his clients everywhere.
October 2022
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